Paul Robeson's Voices

Paul Robeson''s Voices is a meditation on Robeson''s singing, a study of the artist''s life in song. Music historian Grant Olwage examines Robeson''s voice as it exists in two broad and intersecting domains: as sound object and sounding gesture, specifically how it was fashioned in the contexts of singing practices, in recital, concert, and recorded performance, and as subject of identification. Olwage asks: how does the voice encapsulate modes of subjectivity, of being?Combining deep archival research with musicological theory, this book is a study of voice as central to Robeson''s sense of self and his politics. Paul Robeson''s Voices charts the dialectal process of Robeson''s vocal and self-discovery, documenting some of the ways Robeson''s practice revised the traditions of concert singing in the first half of the twentieth century and how his voice manifested as resistance.